Sunday, August 04, 2013
Here is a nice little piece that explains whats going on in Fukishima right now.
Antifa says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:15 pm
Fukushima cannot ever BE “cleaned up” in any possible understanding of that phrase. No creature or machine can approach a molten reactor core and survive the heat and radiation long enough to do a damn thing. It is a sub-critical atomic bomb.
It has NO practical comparison to Chernobyl because Chernobyl did not meltdown — a couple of hydrogen and steam explosions shattered its reactor chamber and building and sent radioactive steam, fuel rod cladding and burning graphite all over the place. As the reactor blew apart it dispersed its fuel rods just enough to avoid their melting down and travelling through the concrete beneath the shattered chamber into the ground. They simply caught fire and started spewing radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Even Chernobyl’s remains were utterly unapproachable. Picking up highly radioactive debris and then dumping a mountain of concrete on the exposed fuel rods and shattered reactor building was as much as was humanly possible. It will have to be done over again from time to time as the heat and radiation degrades the dome over the hot fuel entombed inside.
Fukushima is a thousand times worse, because it has had at least one and possibly two or more cores melt completely from complete lack of any cooling water. They melted and sank right into the ground. They have a life of their own now, which we are powerless to interfere with.
What is being done there is merrily pouring many thousands of gallons of water on these melted cores, which runs on through and becomes groundwater. They are also pumping fresh water into the leaky fuel rod tanks perched four stories above the ground in Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Yes, they are trying to capture this highly radioactive groundwater by building underground barriers and containment tanks, but these methods will only serve for the next year or two. They are steel, which will rapidly degrade and leak wholesale before long, and the hot broth they hold will all run into the sea and into the groundwater further inland.
They are also continuing to prop up the shattered reactor buildings with steel girders, buildings whose main features are gigantic swimming pools filled with used reactor cores, all perched four stories up in the air, all in varying states of damage, disorder and leaking. Only a constant supply of fresh water keeps them from igniting where they are and melting into a much bigger melted core than any of the reactor cores.
When these pools full of used fuel rods all fall down during the next big earthquake, their contents will meltdown and begin spewing radioactive isotopes into the air, sea and groundwater for thousands of years.
All of the melted material from the various reactor cores and fallen pools will eventually meld together into one enormous melted puddle as any intervening soil, rock, steel barriers or any substance known to exist on this planet is inserted between them to stop this melding. There’s no stopping this process.
Fukushima’s fuel will inevitably become one giant melted mass of subcritical nuclear material resting just below the ground surface, a glowing, open hole of utterly unapproachable heat and radiation sitting untouched for many long centuries, spewing radioactivity in all directions. Any substance dumped on it — in any quantity — will rapidly melt and become part of it.
We cannot ever touch it, or go near it, now or ever. We will see Tokyo completely abandoned after the next big earthquake, and never visited again.
TEPCO’s lies and crimes are irrelevant to the crime of building reactors of this design anywhere on the planet.
Reply
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/links-8413.html#GGqmzhThySluyFel.99
Antifa says:
August 4, 2013 at 4:15 pm
Fukushima cannot ever BE “cleaned up” in any possible understanding of that phrase. No creature or machine can approach a molten reactor core and survive the heat and radiation long enough to do a damn thing. It is a sub-critical atomic bomb.
It has NO practical comparison to Chernobyl because Chernobyl did not meltdown — a couple of hydrogen and steam explosions shattered its reactor chamber and building and sent radioactive steam, fuel rod cladding and burning graphite all over the place. As the reactor blew apart it dispersed its fuel rods just enough to avoid their melting down and travelling through the concrete beneath the shattered chamber into the ground. They simply caught fire and started spewing radioactive particles into the atmosphere.
Even Chernobyl’s remains were utterly unapproachable. Picking up highly radioactive debris and then dumping a mountain of concrete on the exposed fuel rods and shattered reactor building was as much as was humanly possible. It will have to be done over again from time to time as the heat and radiation degrades the dome over the hot fuel entombed inside.
Fukushima is a thousand times worse, because it has had at least one and possibly two or more cores melt completely from complete lack of any cooling water. They melted and sank right into the ground. They have a life of their own now, which we are powerless to interfere with.
What is being done there is merrily pouring many thousands of gallons of water on these melted cores, which runs on through and becomes groundwater. They are also pumping fresh water into the leaky fuel rod tanks perched four stories above the ground in Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Yes, they are trying to capture this highly radioactive groundwater by building underground barriers and containment tanks, but these methods will only serve for the next year or two. They are steel, which will rapidly degrade and leak wholesale before long, and the hot broth they hold will all run into the sea and into the groundwater further inland.
They are also continuing to prop up the shattered reactor buildings with steel girders, buildings whose main features are gigantic swimming pools filled with used reactor cores, all perched four stories up in the air, all in varying states of damage, disorder and leaking. Only a constant supply of fresh water keeps them from igniting where they are and melting into a much bigger melted core than any of the reactor cores.
When these pools full of used fuel rods all fall down during the next big earthquake, their contents will meltdown and begin spewing radioactive isotopes into the air, sea and groundwater for thousands of years.
All of the melted material from the various reactor cores and fallen pools will eventually meld together into one enormous melted puddle as any intervening soil, rock, steel barriers or any substance known to exist on this planet is inserted between them to stop this melding. There’s no stopping this process.
Fukushima’s fuel will inevitably become one giant melted mass of subcritical nuclear material resting just below the ground surface, a glowing, open hole of utterly unapproachable heat and radiation sitting untouched for many long centuries, spewing radioactivity in all directions. Any substance dumped on it — in any quantity — will rapidly melt and become part of it.
We cannot ever touch it, or go near it, now or ever. We will see Tokyo completely abandoned after the next big earthquake, and never visited again.
TEPCO’s lies and crimes are irrelevant to the crime of building reactors of this design anywhere on the planet.
Reply
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/links-8413.html#GGqmzhThySluyFel.99
# posted by Frank @ 8:53 PM 
